Iron Brother's Sprint Tri Day 1

Let's just say my preparation for this race consisted of 3 swims and 5 bike rides in the last 3 weeks. This was not intentional. I had a stomach virus that had me off of all training for 10 days. But still, it doesn't bode well for a weekend of 2 back to back sprint tri races.

Let's also say I mis-read the race info about packet pickup and missed it when I got to town on Friday evening by going to the wrong location. I have no excuse for this. I looked at the instructions 3 times and mis-read them each time. I had to call and ask an exception to be able to pick up my packet race morning. This is in an Ironhead race is a big "NO, NO."

Then two minutes before the transition closed I realized I'd left my swim cap in the car and had to sprint back to the parking lot barefoot to get it. Swim cap in hand I then sprint barefoot to the swim start just in time to get into the water with my wave.

In retrospect, I think I was trying to make things hard on myself so that if things did not go well, I'd have a ton of excuses.

I'm not usually this forgetful or negligent. But even acknowledging all this I have to report I had an awesome race. My swim while not fast by any means, really high winds made the water very choppy. But I was able to sight and hold my line very well and have a strong swim in challenging conditions. The last couple of times I've done this race the swim has destroyed me. I've gotten sick at about 100 meters in, I've had problems sighting, I've gotten a mouthful of gasoline, and I've come out of the water completely exhausted barely able to stumble into transition. Like Dory and Finding Nemo, I just kept swimming and then ran into transition and got on the bike.

On the bike I took some time to get my legs under me and drink some fluid. The course is relatively flat with only a couple of very short hills. One is as you leave the park and go out onto a bridge and ride about 4 miles out to the next hill which takes you up to the turnaround. The cross wind wasn't too bad going out to the turn but coming back it was brutal. But to my surprise I was actually riding really strong. I caught and passed a lot of folks in my age group and swim wave and never saw them again. One the way out I was riding with a very high cadence to use my aerobic capacity and warm up my legs. I went into the big ring for about half of my trip back to the park on the way back and then when the winds picked up went back to aerobic, high cadence riding. On my way back out for my second and final loop I went back into the big ring and pushed it a bit but I wasn't suffering at all. I was well under aerobic threshold at about 147 bpm. After the turn I dropped the gearing again but kept the pace high. Even on the way back the highest my heart rate got was 149 and so I was really pleased. My legs weren't burning and there where no signs of cramps so the only issue I would face on the run was the fact that I needed to go to the bathroom.

I got back into transition with about a 54:00 bike split for the 19 mile course and I was really happy with that. I racked the bike and knew there was no way I could wait the entire 5k to wait on the bathroom so I ran off course after about 400m and went to the public bathroom. I split my watch when I went in and came out and it took exactly 1:01. I'm fairly confident my run pace for the first mile was "SLOW". Even without the pit stop. But after the first mile I realized my legs weren't tired no matter how hot it was out on the course (and it was hot, probably about 90 degrees at this point.) Did I mention on my way up to DFW my car thermometer read 113 degrees? It is freaking hot up here even in the morning. Anyway, I started running faster and faster with each passing moment and wound up running about a 25:00 5k complete with bathroom break. I'm happy with that as it is probably my fastest 5k split in a tri since I started racing again 4 years ago. I also wound up finishing 5th in my age group, I think my bike split helped a bit there. So now we'll just see what I have in my tank for tomorrow. Hopefully, I won't forget anything...

Running Notes

So I've been running. A lot of running. More running than I've done in years past. I think it is paying off. Even after about 10 days off due to a stomach virus. So I finally managed to run an 8:45 pace at MAF. Believe me this is no small feat given the fact the average temperature here in Austin has been over 100 degrees for the last 3 weeks. Even when I've gotten up to go to the track in the morning at 6:30 it has been over 80 degrees and 80 percent humidity. This is not ideal weather to attempt running with a low heart rate. It has actually been so hot that the buttons I use to turn on my treadmill have stopped working due to the console warping.

So since my treadmill wasn't working properly and the track was too hot, I've been doing a lot of running on the trails. Primarily a place called the Hill of Life and the Riverrun Trail. And the stairs off of Town Lake. Oddly these workouts have actually made me look forward to running more. And as a result I've run. A lot.

I wish I could say this was planned. You know call it a running "specific" block in my training but honestly it wasn't. So now I'm left to admit my cycling which is normally my default workout has been almost non existant. And my swimming? Well let's just say I've done that even less than I've cycled. I say all that to say this. I'm about to race this weekend. 2 sprint Tris in 2 days. We will just have to see how this goes. At least this time I've been running enough to know no matter how bad the swim and the bike might be, I might be in for two of my best triathlon runs in years.

Hump Day Reflections

So this is what I did on Monday. Over 6 miles of up and down this flight of stairs. All at MAF. Things to realize before you decide to try something like this. 1. This will take about an hour. 2. If you are doing this correctly, even MAF does not make this work easy. 3. If you are doing this correctly, walking down the stairs is way harder than running up them. 4. Walking down the stairs isn't really much of a recovery (This should be obvious from #3 but in case it isn't I'll just point this out for the record). 5. On an 80 degree morning, after about 20 minutes of this, there was steam coming off my shoulders so you should expect this too. And 6. Running up and down stairs like these 60 times in a row felt almost like the end of an ironman -- I know my whole body was shaking when I finished and this wasn't the first time I'd done this workout. The first time I was nauseous for the rest of the day afterward so I'll call shaking a step in the right direction.

At any rate after that was a Threshold Power workout on the trainer. Needless to say my legs were useless to me after that. But I want to start doing workouts that really challenge me to the point of fatigue while staying completely aerobic. This session definitely filled the bill in that regard.

On Tuesday I did a 2 hour recovery bike. I averaged about 19 mph and my heart rate average was about 128. The last 10 min of the ride was tough because my legs were still toast from Monday. Then I went and did a drill focused swim to further recover from Monday.

Today was an hour twenty minute bike in the morning and a 50 min run in the afternoon. I really struggled with the heat on this run. My legs were still tired but the heat today was brutal. I was on the trail at about 5:30 and it was still around 100 degrees here. In the shade. Oh well now I'm off to bed so I can get to the track first thing in the morning tomorrow. Cheers!

This Is Why We Do It...

I think the video speaks for itself. This is exactly what I needed to see.

Last Week Was A Whole Lot Of MAF

So I MAF'd all week. Aside from my two runs on the track and 3 other runs around town, I also spent over 5 hours on the bike and 4 hours in the pool. I think I got in just under 16 hours of total training in which is pretty solid. The encouraging thing I'd like to highlight is the improvement I'm seeing on the track. A few posts ago, I said I started this year running at 9:45 pace per mile at a 152 bpm heart rate. My last 3 visits to the track over the past 2 weeks have been a 9:24 ppm/151bpm, 9:17 ppm/149bpm, and a 9:13ppm/148bpm average over 5 miles.

I started this week off with a 5 mile run at an average heart rate of 138bmp, a 3000 meter swim workout that was primarily long sets with different stroke technique emphasis. I finished off the day with an hour of yoga. Feels good to start getting fit again.